


Devouring Us Both

by ryry_peaches



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Dennis is a Bastard Man, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Sad Ending, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 11:45:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: Mac grows up and around Dennis, more warped with every passing year.





	Devouring Us Both

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Crooked Teeth by Death Cab For Cutie -- I'll probably come back and post a link later but I'm tired right now. It's a very MacDennis song though, imho. Look it up. Title stolen from the lyrics :)

It’s June seventeenth, three days after the end of sophomore year.  

These are the things in Ronnie’s reach right now: two large Sprites from McDonalds, half Sprite, half cherry vodka.  Sour aftertaste, bile rising. An evening of listless drunkenness. A roll of Ritz crackers. A battery-powered fan on a lanyard, in the careful grip of a white hand with long fingers and squared-off nails.  Scatterings of those little leaves that fall and dry and spin when you toss them in the air. A half-finished daisy chain.

Somewhere in the park, Dee and Charlie are finding a secluded place — a little valley off a trail, sharp inclines, clumps of bushes — to smoke from Dee’s Dr Pepper-can pipe without drawing attention to themselves.  Ronnie and Dennis are lying in the shade of the biggest, oldest tree by the nearly-deserted baseball diamond. It’s six o’clock, and soon parents will collect all the kids and bring them home and make them boiled hot dogs or whatever it is the kind of parents who drive their kids to the park on weekends make — and the park will belong to Ronnie, Dennis, Charlie and Dee, and the kids and adults like them, people with nowhere better to be and no one better to be with.

These are the things making Ronnie uncomfortable: the rock under his thigh.  The ache in his shoulders from propping himself up. The quiet, pierced by shrieks from the nearby playground.  The weird knot-ish feeling in his gut when he looks at Dennis and catches Dennis looking back at him. The heat, dry and oppressive, making him wish he’d brought a water bottle.  The sweat on his lip that he wants to rub away. The sweat on Dennis’ lip, which Ronnie also wants to rub away.

“Stop hogging the cold,” he says, rather than addressing any of it.  He rolls to one side and snatches the little fan from Dennis’ hand, aims it down his own neckline.  Sighs. 

*****

It’s July nineteenth, the summer after senior year.  Mac and Dennis are in Dee’s room in their fucking  _ opulent _ mansion, helping her find her red bikini top.

“You should come,” Dennis is saying quietly.  “Mom and Dad don’t give a shit. They let us bring friends as kids.  And this is the last trip before college.”

“For you,” Mac reminds him, and swallows the bitterness in his throat.  He doesn’t even want to go to college, hopes Dennis likes the stuffiness of university, hopes Dee loves sitting quietly through three hour lectures.  “For me, this is just the second of many months to come as a local Burger Barn floor supervisor.” He pulls a size eleven Chuck Taylor from under the bed.

“Okay, so you’ll want a break from that before you really get into the grind, right?”  Dennis grins, all shiny and white from years of orthodontic work, and it lights up Mac’s eyes like a camera flash when he blinks. 

“I dunno,” he says — means  _ yes,  _ but the word dies in his mouth at the idea of Dennis cajoling him just a bit longer.

“Come on, Ronnie,” Dee says from her walk-in closet.  “You’ll keep him out of my hair.”

Mac flushes.  “Don’t call me that,” he says, trying to sound harsh, afraid he just sounds pathetic.  “We aren’t kids anymore.”

_ “Ronnie,”  _ Dennis says, eyes narrowed and glowing at him.  Teasing, cool. “Come to the Shore with us, man, it’ll be fun.  And it’s not like anyone else is begging to take you on a vacation, or your parents —”

Heat flashes up Mac’s spine and settles in his cheeks.  “Is that why you're bringing me? Out of pity?”

“Mac —”  Dennis leans forward.  “It was a joke —”

“I might not be rich like you guys, my dad might be in prison,”  _ God damn it Ronnie don’t lose it,  _ Mac thinks, “but at least I have integrity, Dennis.  I'm not taking your hand-outs. I do fine on my own.”  He dodges the hand Dennis tries to put on his knee; his stomach twists.

“Mac,” Dee says.  Softly, gently, rising like a question.  She steps out of the closet.

He rises to his feet and looks her right in the eyes.  “Sorry, Dee,” he says, and almost means it. “Your uh, your top is pushed underneath the bed, behind the green shoebox — I can't get under there.  You'll have to.”

He turns, eyes itching, and walks out the door, and he hears Dee’s bed creak behind him, Dennis sitting down, probably…Dennis’ dad calls to him from somewhere around the stairs, something like “You excited for tomorrow, kid?”  He doesn't turn, doesn't nod.

It's four miles to the nearest bus stop.  Dennis drove him here in his shiny new Honda two-door.

He could go back in, apologize for overreacting.  Ask for a ride home. Pack his bag for the trip.

He bends down to tighten his shoes for the walk.

*****

It’s July 22, summer after senior year.

Mac's phone rings at around four, not long after he's gotten home from his breakfast shift at the Burger Barn, and he's been lying in his bed, looking at the ceiling — but his mom yells for him to g _ et the goddamn phone already,  _ so he reluctantly rolls over and grabs his extension off his bedside table.  “‘Lo?”

Dee's voice is clear and too loud.  “Mac? I thought I'd get your machine.”

“I just got home.”  He rolls back over, stretching the cord so he can lie on his side.  “How’s the Shore?”

“Crowded,” she says.  “Hot.” He can hear the smile in her voice, though.  “And Dennis has been moody the whole time so far and absolutely no fun to be around.  Because of you. Not coming.” 

“Sweet Dee…”  

He can hear a scuffle on the other end, and an obscured voice, and then Dee, only slightly muffled, saying, “It’s Mac, you — fine.”  Just when he’s considering hanging up, he hears a huff on her end.

“Mac?”  

He sits up, jerking like a reflex.  “Dennis? What do you want?” But his gut gives a tug.

“Listen, Mac, I’m…I wanna say I’m.  Um. Sorry.” There’s a weird vibe in his voice, a catch that Mac can’t quite place.  “It…would’ve been really cool if you’d come along, and I guess it’s my fault you didn’t, so…”

Mac wants to be mad.  Wants to hurt Dennis while he’s being vulnerable, while Mac has all the hand.  Wants to blurt out “I slept with your prom date,” because it’s true and yes, he regrets it, but how  _ good  _ would it feel, how vindicating, to make Dennis sputter, to make his stomach wrench.

But the thing is that Dennis got in a lot of trouble at school — they all did — and Mr Reynolds kind of yells a lot, so Mac has heard Dennis give his fair share of perfunctory apologies: curtly, flashing eyes, tense jaw.  “Sorry,” spit at the ground, no eye contact, sullen silences.

He's heard all that from Dennis, one apology after the next over stupid shit he didn't feel guilty about in the slightest.  But Mac has  _ never  _ heard Dennis speak shakily before.  Never with a catch in his voice.

Mac swallows down his anger.  Literally swallows. “Thanks, man,” he says quietly.  “Sorry I didn't come…but I've picked up some extra shifts at the Barn, so…” 

“God.”  Dennis sighs.  “Fucking Burger Barn.  I can't believe you got a job —”

“Not gonna live with my mom forever,” Mac interjects.  “Listen, I just got home — I'm gonna go clean up. Be nice to Dee or she'll bitch at me about it.”

Dennis clicks away without a goodbye.

*****

Mac learns to make himself dinner at night: mac and cheese or fried eggs.  Standing at the stove, watching the clock on the wall tick the minutes by. His mom watches TV and sometimes eats what he puts in front of her.  

His dad doesn’t call all summer.

*****

It’s November 3, fall after senior year of high school.

Dennis and Dee have dragged Mac to some over-hyped kegger thrown by an irreputable frat — Phi Kappa Delta or something equally trite, because it’s  _ part of the college experience.   _   
Mac doesn’t want  _ the college experience,  _ wouldn’t even if he could afford it, he’s pretty sure.  But Mr and Mrs Reynolds sprung for Dennis to rent his own apartment — Dee had the option, actually  _ chose  _ to live on campus, something about her  _ social repertoire  _ — and it’s a good place for Mac to go when he’s too drunk to face his mom, or too sober to face her, how okay she seems without his dad, how empty the house feels without him.

And he doesn’t get many Saturday nights off from Burger Barn, so he figures he might as well celebrate.

But he can’t find Dee, and Dennis seems to be on the make: he’s got a girl up against a wall, trapped loosely between his arms, and she seems enthusiastic enough, arching into him — and Mac can interrupt Dennis when he’s with girls, has before, but this time it seems different.

There’s something new in Dennis since he went to college, a confidence deeper and truer than his weird “golden god” bravado, and it unsettles Mac — how dare Dennis change when Mac has stayed the same, how dare he have a new place and school and new girls to bother and new guys to dick around with?  And why does it make Mac feel like he’s come unmoored? Like he’s floating through this party, this house, these fucking people without experiencing them? Why is he sure he would snap right back into himself like a rubber band if Dennis so much as made eye contact with him?

Dee turns out to be making out with a bland-looking brunette in an upstairs bedroom; she springs back when Mac steps in, practically shoves the guy off the queen-sized bed.  “It’s not what it looks like,” she tells Mac frantically. Her eyes, just the same shade of blue as Dennis’, are wide and wild. 

Doesn’t Dee have a boyfriend?

“Um…”  His heart is racing; when did it start racing?  “I’m so sorry to interrupt, I — Dee, I just wanted to let you know I was leaving — I won’t, um, I won’t tell anyone —”  He feels short of breath. Like he ran here.

“Wait, you’re leaving?”  Dee’s frown softens, but focuses somehow.  “It’s like, 11:30.” 

“Well, I came because it was important to Dennis, I don’t really know any of these people, and he’s hooking up with someone now, so…I have no more reason to be here.”  He shrugs. “It’s not like I wanna sit and watch Dennis swallow some girl’s tongue.”

Dee’s eyes narrow.  “Okay,” she says slowly, drawing it out.  “Call me in the morning.”

“I have church.”

She rolls her eyes now.  “Call me after church, then.  And shut the door when you leave, would you?”

*  

Mac waits tables five nights a week at a greasy spoon downtown for fifty cents more an hour than he got at the Burger Barn.  He sells weed to high schoolers, standing in the dumpster corral on his break, taking in their letter jackets and school ties and feeling a tug under his ribs, wishing that he’d been more like these kids, who are really still his peers, barely younger than him.  Neon bands in their braces, chipped nail polish, jeans torn at the cuffs.

Four years pass this way, and suddenly he and Charlie are standing outside the UPenn auditorium, chipboard tickets in their fists, and Charlie’s got a stain shaped like California on his tie, and Mac’s wearing his uniform pants from high school because in four years he hasn’t needed anything better.

An hour and a half into the name-calling part of the ceremony, Mac drifting, Charlie tapping his fist against his knee, the R’s start.  They call Dee before Dennis, and Charlie and Mac whoop and holler for both, and Mr and Mrs Reynolds smile quietly. And not too long after that, Mac finds himself outside in the cool mid-afternoon, and Dee is crashing into him, all polyester and beer breath and hair.  Mac thumps her back like a guy and nods at Dennis over her shoulder, and Dennis’ grin is wide when he leans forward and wraps them both up in a hug. 

“We did it,” he says, and he’s more smug than excited.  “We graduated college.” 

His eyes are two inches from Mac’s and shiny like he hasn’t seen them in — ever.  But Mac doesn’t ask, just says a quiet “congratulations,” and if it feels like something dislodges in his gut when Dennis pulls away, it’s just his stomach rumbling.

“Guigianno’s,” he says as Dee pulls back; he watches the twins smooth down their hair in twin motions, right hand, front to back.  “Charlie and I wanted to take you guys to a celebratory dinner.” 

Dee bites her lip, scanning for her parents.  “Mom and Dad are throwing us a huge party — all the cousins, and Gammy and Pop-Pop —”

“Screw ‘em.”  Dennis nudges her shoulder with his fist.  His eyes stay locked on Mac’s, shining, sparkling.  “Guigianno’s.”

*****

Years pass.  Mac, Dennis, and Charlie buy a bar.  Mr Reynolds — Frank — maybe not the twins’ dad, maybe Charlie’s — buys it from under them.  Dennis and Mac share an apartment, and work together, and Mac learns not to poke at the things his stomach and chest and blood do when Dennis looks at him in certain ways, talks to him softly, or harshly, any emotion at all.  

He dulls it by sleeping with women, any woman who will have him, really: the hot Jesus crusader from the rallies.  Dennis’ mom, for reasons he’d rather not examine. Carmen, who is so much better to him than he is to her. He pretends that all of them are more than okay.

The hardest part should be the betrayals, one after the next: Mac sleeps with Mrs Reynolds.  Dennis bets on Mac getting the shit kicked out of him — which he does. Dennis kicks Mac out.  They fight and throw things. Mac uses Dennis’ expensive shampoo. Dennis throws out Mac’s free weights.  

That should be the hardest part, but the hardest part is this:

Dennis strokes his thumbs over Mac’s cheeks.  “Do that for me, okay, baby boy?” And Mac melts just a bit — or a lot — turns liquid at the touch, tries to remember the last time anyone treated him tenderly.  He looks at Dennis and murmurs his acquiescence, and maybe he would have asked Dennis what he was doing, what the touch meant —  _ maybe he would have —  _ but Frank just has to bust in, to check in and collect the kids who — were those kids there this whole time?

And then there’s a blur of heat crawling up his chest and settling in his face, anger, fight, Dennis’ hands on his back and his shoulders, calming, soothing, shushing.  Through the front door, into the Range Rover, suburbs and downtown and suddenly they’re entering Paddy’s through the back door, paper diner bags in their hands.

“So you guys have to use the baby — bid on the baby —”  Frank says between bites of his burger, sitting across from Dennis and Mac in the back booth.

“Well, I think, technically, we’re bidding on Sweet Dee’s uterus,” Mac points out.  “And why would a couple of dudes want a baby?”

“Mac,” Dennis says, resting his hand on Mac’s elbow.  “Vic. We’re a  _ couple.” _

“Oh.  We’re — we’re homos?”

Dennis nods sagely.  “Yep. We’re friendly gay real estate moguls who are willing to pay top dollar for my sister’s premium womb.”  His thumb rubs a distracting little circle on Mac’s upper arm — who knew there were so many nerve endings by the elbows?  

“I get to be the top,” Mac says with a little nod.  “The top is the real  _ guy- _ guy.”

“Pretty sure they’re both guys,” Dennis says.  He retracts his hand to grab a fry, swirling it through the little puddle of ketchup he’s made in the corner of his takeout tray.  “And I can’t imagine it ever coming up, so…sure, you can be the top.”

“Yes!”  Mac grins, and Dennis meets it with a look that Mac can’t define — something between fondness and contempt, he guesses, which is probably what Dennis feels towards him most of the time.

He can’t explain to himself exactly why being the top is so important, and he doesn’t want to poke it too closely, but if he were held at gunpoint and forced to articulate it, he might say that being the top isn’t really different from being with a girl.  If you’re doing — it — from behind, you can pretend it  _ is  _ a girl, a girl with a broad back and short hair, maybe.  So it’s not really gay, is it, to stick your dick in someone?  It’s what you do with girls, and if a guy and a girl can do it, it can’t be gay.

And maybe later, when they’re beside the pool and Dennis has got a hand on each of Mac’s shoulders from behind, rubbing gently, the way tired guys do to their wives and girlfriends in line at the supermarket, it doesn’t feel very not-gay.  But a girl could do that to a guy, and Dennis has long, thin fingers, and Mac can’t see him, so he can still pretend. If Vic is a guy and Honey is a girl, it’s okay. It’s just their personas. It’s not gay.

But when he gets in the pool, heated but still cold on his skin, it feels like holy water, and he kicks himself as far from Dennis as he can.

*****

They’re both a little tipsy, halfway through a scheme that has managed not to fall through yet, sitting at the bar when they promised Charlie they’d be at the weird French restaurant three streets down — something about fraudulent produce, or poultry, Mac can’t remember.  Doesn’t care.

He also can’t remember when the tequila bottle came into play, but it did, and there’s already a little pile of lime peels between them when Dennis’ grin widens, exposing those sharp teeth on the sides of his mouth, looking like trouble.  

“Hey Mac,” he says in his fake-casual, give-me-what-I-want voice, “Lick the salt off me.”

Mac grins back, rolls his eyes, and tries to ignore the way his stomach leaps up where his heart should be and his heart leaps into his head.  “Gross, dude.”

“Gross how,” Dennis demands.  “There is nothing gross about me, and there is nothing gross about licking salt off my skin.”

And before Mac can argue, before he can even think of an argument that isn’t just  _ you’re drunk I’m drunk let’s not do anything weird,  _ Dennis has tugged down his collar, tilted his head, and shaken out a generous dusting of salt in the place where his neck turns into shoulder.  “Come on, man.”

Mac’s head feels light, and he blames it on the tequila, but he dutifully pours out a shot — 

And then he leans forward on his stool, and cups Dennis’ cheek with one hand because it feels like a natural place to put it, and he licks a stripe of salt off Dennis’ skin just like that, and underneath the salt Dennis tastes good, and he allows himself to indulge, licking one more hot stripe there, lips trailing the skin, before he pulls back, hands, mouth, and everything, and when he downs the shot he’s half thankful to have the taste gone, not sticking around to remind him, but he’ll never forget that Dennis tastes the way rosemary and lemon zest smell.

“Dude,” Dennis says, and the shit-eating grin is still pasted on his face, but his eyes are darker, narrowed just a bit on Mac — or is Mac being paranoid?  “Lime.”

Mac sucks his lime wedge like he’s nursing it and wishes Charlie would come back.

Later, when they’ve sobered up, when they’re standing in front of the mirror in their shitty little bathroom together, washing their faces, brushing their teeth, Mac almost asks about it.  Almost demands to know why Dennis demanded he lick the salt off of him earlier, why it felt good, why Dennis’ skin tasted better than the Body Shop chemical twang of most girls’.

“Night, man,” Dennis says.

Mac nods at him and lets him go.  

He lies awake all night, not letting himself wonder with any real words, but wondering all the same.

*****

It’s been months since what Mac thinks of as the Salt/Shots Incident, and what Dennis probably just doesn’t think about.  Because why would he?

It’s nothing — literally, not a thing, a non-event, really not different from hundreds of other ill-thought intimacies on drunken evenings.  Sharing beds when the heat goes out. Hands on shoulders, knees bumping in the car, extenuating circumstances, little touches, meaningless things.

Except this one doesn’t feel meaningless, and maybe that’s because they talked about it beforehand.  This wasn’t Dennis crawling into Mac’s bed at three am, muttering about a stuck window, sleeping on the edge and gone by dawn.  It wasn’t a casual pat on the back.

_ “Lick the salt off me.  Come on, man.”  _ Teasing, friendly pressure.  But words, out loud, messily day-drunk but not blacked out under buzzing fluorescent lights, carefully picked because Dennis doesn’t say things by accident, even stupid, kind of impulsive, instantly regrettable things.

Mac barely graduated high school, has never set foot in a university lecture hall, and he’s pretty sure years of sniffing glue with Charlie — far past the acceptable age to sniff glue — plus what even he has to admit is full-blown if manageable alcoholism have taken their toll on his brain cell count.  But he has watched a lot of cop shows, because there’s nothing round-the-clock reliable as Law & Order on three separate channels. So because of this, he knows that the difference between manslaughter and murder is premeditation.

Without premeditation, it’s a lesser crime, a shorter sentence.  

Just the words “I’m gonna kill you” are enough to make it murder, Mac is  _ pretty  _ sure.

So what Dennis said, practically forced Mac to do?  Pressing, arguing? What is that, if not premeditation?

*****

“I’m gay,” Mac says, and his heart beats weird — everyone says they knew; everyone remembers when he said it on the ship, much as he tries to pretend that whole fucking cruise never set sail, that they were never on it.  The whole gang is looking at him with barely more than boredom in their eyes, but when the words come out, he expects yelling, for some reason. Lightning, real or metaphorical, a bolt from heaven or a jab from one of the only people he cares about.  

Nothing happens, except that he wins ten thousand dollars and loses it almost as quickly.  But he said he was staying out this time. And it’s scary — but it’s nice, isn’t it? It’s good?  Comfortable, being who he truly is? Right?

It should be.

It should feel good,  _ right,  _ he should feel right at home.  But the word sticks freshly in his throat every time he says it.   _ Gay.   _ Such a small word, how did it manage to sit under his ribs and fester like a tumor for so many years?  How did it leave an aching emptiness when he finally cut it out, shoved it up his throat and between his lips in a nondescript boardroom, waiting for a payout, lording over Frank, rich for the first time in his entire dirty little life? 

How did everyone — everyone important — know before he did?  Why is the room so big compared to him? 

These are the things Mac doesn’t know: how he’s going to spend the ten grand; what he’s going to do with the rest of his evening; whether it’s going to feel awkward, spending time alone with Dennis, now that Mac has ripped this thing out of himself and plunked it down between them, forced himself to acknowledge it.

Dennis talks a big game, but Mac knows he didn’t expect this.  In his crooked little heart, Dennis probably truly believes that he has Mac all figured out, and Mac staying in the closet was part of the plan, he can see that in the lopsided twist of Dennis’ mouth, the way he dismisses Mac, says he’ll go right back into the closet.  He doesn’t say he’s surprised, but he must be. He has to be.

It has to be different to think something than to know it.  And Mac saying it out loud is what made it real. And maybe might chase away one of the few constants in his life.  Dennis is an anchor; heavy and unwieldy but grounding, necessary, something that Mac doesn’t function well without, and if being gay means he’ll be set adrift, maybe he shouldn’t be out.

Maybe Dennis is right, maybe he’s always right.

Whatever.  At least Mac is rich.  

*****

Dennis’ eyes get colder and less focused every day.  And everyone says it’s not Mac’s fault — but what else has changed lately?  Just Mac coming out.

Charlie dismisses him, tells him that Dennis always knew.

But maybe Dennis needs a reminder that Mac isn’t going anywhere.

It’s easy to forget, when he’s so caught up in his own shit, that maybe he’s an anchor to Dennis, as well; Dennis, who has a barely-touched orange bottle in the medicine cabinet with his name on it and more than a couple notebooks under his bed filled with frankly incomprehensible ramblings in cramped handwriting and smeared ink.

Dennis hunches his shoulders.  Dennis screws up his brow and yells.  Everyone has long since learned to ignore his anger, or work around it, or weaponize it — wind him up and point him in the right direction and he’ll go off, hitting the mark every time, coming apart just enough to frighten whomever needs frightening.  Never enough to actually hurt anyone, never do more harm than maybe breaking a lawn chair in half.

“I have feelings,” Dennis is half-shouting.  “Of course I have  _ feelings!   _ I have big feelings!”  Mac slips out the back door as Dennis is saying, “It hurts.”

When Dennis takes the rocket launcher, cradling it in his hands, holding it like it’s something precious, fragile and not a deadly and illegally obtained weapon, something inside Mac expands.  Reaches out to Dennis, stretches like a rubber band in his direction.

Dennis must know this means something.  That bros don’t give one another expensive, pain-in-the-ass, over-the-top gifts on fucking Valentine’s Day.  His brow softens, and the set of his jaw loosens, and the way he’s looking at Mac, something like tenderness in his eyes… 

“It’s perfect,” Dennis says quietly, making eye contact, his face wide open and practically vulnerable in a way that Mac has seen only a few times, definitely not recently.  “Thank you.”

The stretched-out thing inside snaps back.

*****

Dennis leaves.

All in one weekend, Dennis introduces the gang to his son and the mother of his son and his whole midwestern alias and then all of a sudden he’s gone, on some weird mid-life bend to shape up, sober up, be a good father.  He barely takes anything — a duffle full of his most respectable clothes, a little leather-bound notebook, his computer and all the cash from the coffee can in their kitchen labelled “4 EMERGENCYS.” 

“Goodbye, Mac,” he says, and his eyes linger longer on Mac than anyone else in the gang, and Mac doesn’t know what to say, but there’s something ugly and hot crawling its way up his spine, pooling like acid in his stomach, burning his cheeks.  Anger? Regret?

Dennis is gone, just like that, into a taxi and out of Philly.

Mac satiates his anger with the rocket launcher, left behind already, taking it all out on the Range Rover, and a little sick part of him half-wishes Dennis were in there, wishes that he could  _ make  _ Dennis feel the fire snaking through his veins.

The months pass by in a listless blur.  Mac sleeps in his own bed and then in Dennis’, because it’s bigger and the pillows are nicer and who’s there to stop him?  If he wakes up to Dennis raging at him, it will be because Dennis is  _ there.   _ The pillowcases take two and a half weeks to fully stop smelling like Dennis.

Mac works out.  A lot. Whenever he’s not at work or sleeping.  He logs hours on the bike. He renews his gym membership and after running into Carmen more than once, they start working out together.

“I want to tell you something,” he says one day, almost surprising himself.  They’re standing at the weird hippie-ish juice counter, and she’s just finished telling him a story about her kid that he’s sure anyone else would have found adorable, and the need just hits him.  “I’m gay,” he says softly.

She laughs, but it’s kind.  “I…kinda knew that.”

“No, that’s not…”  He sighs, wrapping his towel around his neck and gripping the ends, the way Dennis sometimes does with scarves.  “I’m gay, and I’m sure you’re not the only girl I’ve fucked over figuring that out, but it means more with you…If I’ve gone through what I have, I can only imagine how hard it was for you to get here, and I made that harder, and I’m sorry,” he spits out in an embarrassed rush.

“Mac.”  She smiles, and it’s so soft and genuine, and she’s so good, so the antithesis of Dennis, of the whole gang, and he really does think that if he were straight, things might have worked between them.  “Thank you.”  She tilts her head.  "I...yeah, you hurt me, but it was a long time ago.  I'm glad you got yourself sorted out, and...thank you, for apologizing."

When she pulls him into a hug, she smells like fruit and chocolate.

Mac throws himself into his new body, and he meets guys for drinks but he never goes past drinks, and he tries to fill the empty spaces in the apartment because he can’t fill the empty spaces in himself half as easily.  He goes to work, goes to the gym, comes home and it doesn’t matter which empty bed he crawls into. It’s all the same, and he guesses that maybe the emptiness will always linger.

Maybe he’s too tied to Dennis — in every way possible, from the bar to the apartment to the million little intimacies that are missing from his life.  Maybe that empty space is meant to stay empty. 

Is anyone peeling Dennis’ apples for him?  Is he doing it for himself? Or does he just not eat apples in North Dakota?       

*****

Mac is hovering right at forty and fraying around the edges — maybe the whole gang is: Dee’s been having fits of anger that mirror Dennis’ a little too closely; the waitress is always around for some stupid reason, and always drunk; Charlie sometimes sees things that aren't there when he's not quite high enough to justify it.

Maybe everyone starts to fade and go rough, pill up like old sweaters as they age, and he's just never payed close enough attention to notice anyone but them: the four people who make up his daily life, and the ones who scatter their periphery.  His mom. His dad, maybe, when he was very young.

Dennis is back and he’s gone sallow, sad.  The bags under his eyes have taken up permanent residence, and it’s  _ Dennis,  _ who hasn’t forgotten his nightly skin-care routine more than a handful of times since his early twenties.

It’s ten at night on a Saturday and Mac and Dennis have skived off work, and they’ve found their way somehow to the park they frequented as kids, before they had jobs and illnesses, in that weird twisted time when they’d grown aware of every wrong thing in their lives but refused to confront any of it — and let too much of it collect cobwebs over the years, taking up residence in the wrinkles around their eyes and the sore spots in their backs.

These are the things just outside of Mac’s reach: a movie theater soda cup filled with Jack.  His phone, lying on the ground where he plunked it when they first sat down. Dennis’ long-sleeved plaid button-up — the kind that’s nicer than flannel but still a plaid button-up, balled up in a sweaty mess.  Dennis himself, down to his T-shirt and jeans, his hair curling up and frizzing just a bit. His eyes, resolutely focused everywhere, it seems, except Mac.

“Den?”  Mac rolls onto his stomach, supporting himself on his elbows.  He stares into the treeline. “I’ve missed you.” It’s the whiskey talking; it’s the edible he did back at home finally hitting; it’s anything but Mac himself.

“I’ve been back for a couple months, bro,” Dennis says, his voice only slightly a question, his eyes hot on Mac’s cheek.

“No,” Mac says, “I mean.”  He clears his throat and turns just slightly, looking at Dennis from the corner of his eye.  “I mean, when’s the last time we just spent time together?”

“Mac…”  

Mac turns fully and sits up, legs crossed, and just looks at Dennis and lets Dennis look at him.  “Den.” 

Dennis is so much closer now; Mac’s moved closer to him.  “Den,” he says again, and maybe he’s higher than he thought, drunker, too loose, too open — whatever he is.  Dennis opens his mouth, lips forming a word, and Mac can’t help it, can’t help himself; he leans forward and the space between them disappears and their lips meet.

*****

It’s noon on Sunday and Mac is eating cereal and Dennis is looking at him with something too close to pity, too much like regret.  It’s worse than a hangover, and shame pools in Mac’s gut, hotter than anger, and he forces himself to chew and swallow but he feels frozen to the stupid kitchen chair.

“Mac,” Dennis says.  His voice is almost gentle, or at least, it lacks that hard, cruel edge he usually wields like a weapon.  “Last night…that can’t happen again, man.”

“Dennis —”

“Please,” Dennis says, holding up a hand.  His eyes are twenty degrees cooler than normal, burning cold, frostbitten.  “I can’t — not with you.” 

Mac drops his spoon, and it splashes milk on him and on the table.  “Why,” he says, hates himself for sounding like he’s pleading, not knowing how to be any other way.  His gut is twisting, fighting against his cheerios.

Dennis hardens his jaw, maybe grits his teeth.  “Because —” His tongue darts out, wetting his top lip.  “Because, Mac…God damn it, you’re — it would kill me to lose you,” he says, turning his face down and away from Mac; his ears are red, his voice low and cracked.  “I need to be in control around you.”

“Dennis.”  Mac’s stomach stops twisting and starts doing something else, some empty, gassy kind of thing that throbs.  “I would  _ never  _ walk away from you.  Not like —” He bites his lip; he can’t remember the last time he and Dennis had a discussion like this — fits and starts.  D.O.A. 

“Not like me,” Dennis says huffily.  “Yeah.” He turns back, and his eyes are shining, and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong.  “I tried, you know? For once in my fucking life, I actually worked for something that mattered.  And it wound me up right back here.”

Mac bites his bottom lip and looks up at Dennis, standing practically over him, shiny eyes and red cheeks and pock-marks near his eye, all the ugly little trappings of personhood, burnout-dom.  “Everything always does,” he says. Not that it means anything.

Dennis nods, and gives him this startlingly un-Dennis smile, something that fringes on the vulnerable.  “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” he says softly, and for maybe the third time in their lives, Mac believes him.

Not that it ever means anything.

 


End file.
